


It's Hollow, Love

by Atlanova



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Merlin is alone, Morgana Is Still Evil, Post-Battle of Camlann (Merlin), Post-War, Reunion, Spoilers, Whump, if you've just finished watching merlin read at your own risk, it was sort of horrible to write, mergana redemption, spoilers for the finale, well sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28754385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanova/pseuds/Atlanova
Summary: Run. As if he could even bring himself to sigh, let alone run. And why would he run? What is there to run to?"What do you want, Morgana?" he finally says. His throat burns as the words rise from it.Merlin feels her presence as she circles around him. It's not a good kind of presence, like it used to be. Instead, it pains him. Because he feels the sadness of her magic. He feels everything she feels. And it hurts. It blinds him to all of his morals and instead all he feels is something other than numnbess.Morgana, of all people.__________After Camlann, Merlin refuses to kill Morgana and sends her away. Some time later, after Arthur's demise, it's a strange luck that Morgana finds him once again.
Relationships: Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin/Morgana (Merlin), Morgana & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	It's Hollow, Love

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this idea of a post-camlann merlin/morgana narrative thing for a while, and inspiration for it suddenly hit me last night at 2am, and i bashed it all out.
> 
> it's a lot more poetic and ambitious than my stuff usually is, and i had to stop myself from going into too much narrative detail because i wanted it to be a really obscure narrative. 
> 
> anyways, it is really sad and please don't read if you've just finished watching merlin. well, i've warned you!

Merlin cannot watch Arthur float away any more, and even before the King's armor stops glinting in the sombre moonlight, the warlock turns away. He could not bring himself to light the fire.

His head hurts. Everywhere burns, something like a fire caused by the uproar of the gods themselves.

Merlin doesn't register the numnbess of his veins. Not only did he let Arthur go, but he let _her_ go, too. Oh, he did - and he knows it. No matter how much, within the past eight years, he has tried to deny it. Hell, even the agony in his head is aware of it. 

But, no. 

No.

He does, in fact, know that he let her go a lot later than that. He remembers a fading Arthur in his peripheral vision as he had watched the foes interact. Merlin remembers the pain in her eyes. The one he had sworn - and he doesn't know how many goddamn times - that would never break him again. 

He remembers telling her to leave as he dropped a defenseless Excalibur to the ground, its blade left without her blood marked on it.

He watched her go. He saw the tiredness on her face and the long raven locks of hair tangled in angry knots. He watched her disappear and then, for a second or two, sank to his weak knees.

He had listened to mercy, even after everything she has done, the brutality she has reigned over the kingdom. The Kingdom that was supposed to be his and Arthur's. The one that was supposed to be bathed in a golden sun and wrapped in a safe happiness.

Merlin steps on a decaying leaf and almost passes out. The idea of happiness. What is it? His side feels cold. Where has everyone gone?

The servant, as dawn refuses to rise, collapses to the damp forest undergrowth.

He feels sobs rack his body. He knows that he is shaking violently and it hurts. But he doesn't mind.

This time, Merlin does not mind. Not if Arthur is gone.

He deeply regrets letting her go and not killing her, like he should have done. But vengeance had never been something that even remotely caught his attention. Because he'd seen too much of it. 

But Merlin knows that he would have cried harder until the sky shook and thundered, if he had killed her.  
Because lord knows that losing her that first time was painful enough.

Merlin refuses to listen to the life of the forest around him, as he sits there, tears drying into nothing on his face. 

He doesn't flinch when he hears branches snap in front of him - nor when he hears her voice. The ghost of a voice that is very much the inhabitant of a body with a beating heart. 

"It's cold," she says. Merlin swallows and he wants to sleep. "Where is Arthur?" she asks him.

Merlin's hand drags along the sodden leaves, such a heavyweight that burns and he wants to stop. But it seems that he is reaching for a sword he left behind a long time ago.

"Arthur's dead, Morgana."

He doesn't know why he even bothers to find Excalibur; he had the chance, after all, to kill her and he refused to. It's not as if she poses any threat to him, anyway. Her brother is dead, Camelot is doomed, the fields of Camlann are empty, and Merlin is broken. It's all he feels she has ever wanted. And Merlin has nothing left to protect.

All the same, Merlin feels inclined not to run away. To stay beside the witch he had sworn to hate.

_Run. As if he could even bring himself to sigh, let alone run. And why would he run? What is there to run to?_

"What do you want, Morgana?" he finally says. His throat burns as the words rise from it, having been haunted by cries and only that, for the last few hours.

Merlin feels her presence as she circles around him. It's not a good kind of presence, like it used to be. Instead it pains him. Because he feels the sadness of her magic. He feels everything she feels. And it hurts. It blinds him to all of his morals and instead all he feels is something other than numnbess. 

Morgana, of all people. 

His sworn enemy, of all people. A whisper of a love that had blindsided him, one day.

He watches, through half-closed eyes, as Morgana kneels in front of him. He knows it by heart, everything he sees behind her eyes: every morsel of terror, of sorrow, of failire, of torment and of loss. He feels her fingers beneath his chin and her nails dig into his skin. 

He can't wince, nor can he move away from her touch, and he expects her to laugh in his face. To tell him how he has failed, now that the once and future king has nothing left to do but float into the abyss.

Instead, a tear slides down her face. She looks haunted. Hallowed. Hollow.

"What are you doing?" Merlin asks, voice an agonizing whisper. He knows what crying is. He saw her cry, all those years ago, and he has cried. 

"I ask you the same thing, Merlin."

She doesn't call him Emrys. Merlin finds himself taken aback. He has been Emrys to her for as long as he can remember.

Yet, she has always been Morgana, to him. And he's sure that if she had a druid name, he would not use it in vain, as she had used his.

"I'm sitting here, in a forest," he tells her. The words feel strange but they take a weight from his chest, and so he yearns to carry on. "Alone. Because I let you go. I lost Arthur. I lost our destiny. Ours, Morgana. And mine and Arthur's. Lost it ... " he trails off, but seems to make himself complete the sentence that strangely soothes his shattered heart, "I lost it all. We ... lost it all."

He shudders. Morgana trembles. 

There's another wave of sadness. One they both share.

Merlin's assent is nothing but a confused nod, when Morgana asks him to follow her. 

Perhaps it's because she is all he has left, even when, once, she was all he wished to never have.

Two broken hearts, oceans apart, tossed together in the mightiest of storms. 

____________

Morgana remembers nothing with a faint heart. Through the years, as she had grown so bitter and so tangled in an inescapable maze of hatred, that she has failed to shake things off.

She tried to kill Arthur. Again and again. She tried to kill Merlin. Over and over.

She tried and failed. Forever and the day's relapse.

The weight that she has carried. Every ounce of hatred she felt in Camelot, back when she was regularly clean and her hair was free of unforgiving knots. Back when she used to smile and back when she told Arthur that killing things does not mend a broken heart.

"You're a bit of a hypocrite, Morgana," Merlin mumbles somewhere along the way. "It's hostile, really."

And with another beat of her knowing heart, Morgana is aware that Merlin's observations are not erroneous, this time.

She used to hate Arthur for going on hunts. She used to hate Uther for executing her kin. She used to hate anyone who hurt anyone else.

And Morgana almost wants to collapse to the ground in nothing but a heap of what she had become.

She doesn't remember the day she first killed someone for revenge. She does not recall the moment she first tried to assassinate her brother, nor the hours she spent keeping the company of ruthless villains. It has blurred over the years.

Lastly, she does not know the hatred that grew out of nowhere, for Merlin.

She had loved him a long time ago, perhaps. If she remembers that far back. But then she had wanted him dead one day and the wars had commenced.

It had swallowed her up, along with everyone she had ever wished to keep close.

"What have we done, Merlin?" she asks. The question sears her heart. "What have we done to the world that was supposed to be ours?"

Merlin scoffs. They stand on the highest peak of a rainy mountain, overlooking Camlann and Camelot. 

Merlin makes himself look at Morgana.

"Ours?" he whispers as if only just acquainting himself with the word. "Morgana, I don't think either of us have the right to say that aloud."

"Why not?" her tone is cold. Almost disguising a humourless laugh. "Look at it, Merlin. Look at the land we have burned. The people we have betrayed and the kin we have abandoned."

"Then, yes," Merlin slowly replies, voice still heavy with grief but screaming awareness. "Claiming a land we have ruined, as ours. It's ... the respectable thing to do. I think. Taking responsibility for a trauma we caused," he whispers.

When Merlin speaks next, his voice is tired and, for a moment, aged. One that has spoken too many awful things, and been parted from too many people. One that used to speak about love and life and goodwill and friendship. Now, it stands alone in a vast nothing. A raw pain that always was.

"I think, Morgana, that in many ways, you are the kin I abandoned. And I am the kin you abandoned."

"Perhaps you are right." She does not seem surprised at his statement, as he had thought she may. Instead, her voice knew. It knew every syllable it sounded. "Because in many ways, Merlin, we are the kin who should have saved this world in the first place. If we had not drifted so far, we may have been able to salvage something." 

In many ways, one another is all they've ever had, even if they'd purposely spent seven years living too many kingdoms apart. 

Merlin has always hated loss.

Morgana has always caused it.

They're as opposite as day and night. The rain and the sun, be damned.

The only thing they mutually know, is that destinies are ruthless things that lurk in the darkness. They never exist in daylight, and instead persist where things are cursed. 

They both know that they've made mistakes.

They both know what they've lost.

And, for a time that seemed like an eternity, it haunted the two damaged souls.

But they both know what they have, now. And it may be shattered and impossible to piece together. But it's something. 

Merlin doesn't return to Camelot for a long time. He finds solace in Morgana's company between the lines. 

They've found what they lost.

Even if it is at the end - after Camlann, the slayer of everything familiar.

They've found what they had lost.


End file.
